


The Question-Mark Curve of a Cat's Tail

by nonelvis



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, PWP, rarepairs are where it's at baby, titles that only make sense to me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:35:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24167473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonelvis/pseuds/nonelvis
Summary: “Doctor. We’ve always had the same set of mutual priorities, and they always boil down to ‘being together,’ give or take a little murder.” Missy unpinned her hat, sent it spinning over one of the bedpoles. “Today’s not about murder, in case you haven’t already worked that out.”
Relationships: Tenth Doctor/Missy
Comments: 11
Kudos: 42





	The Question-Mark Curve of a Cat's Tail

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my beta Platypus, who finds what needs fixing when I can no longer see it.
> 
> Not specifically based on [this delightful Ten/Missy fanart by valc0 on Tumblr](https://valc0.tumblr.com/post/187552384880), but it's what made me think to write this pairing in the first place, and the artist deserves credit for that.

The woman’s hand twined with the Doctor’s as he reached for the last hyperbombambulator coil in the bargain box in Ashkramk City’s machinery market. Fingers cool, nails neatly filed into half-moons, grip as tight as his.

“Excuse me,” he said, “I believe that’s mine.”

“Excuse _me_ ,” the woman replied, “but ladies first.”

He’d have said she was dressed anachronistically, except that would have required a universally normalised sense of time, not to mention a universally normalised dress sense, and goodness knows he was in no position to pass judgement there, theoretically modern pinstriped suit aside. Nevertheless, the woman was pure Earth Victorian: layered skirt puffed with a petticoat, a corset and matching jacket, a jaunty purple hat with a sprig of cherries and seasonally inappropriate holly leaves. More face paint than a Victorian Lady, capital-L and all, would have been wearing at the time, but she did flutter her eyelashes very distractingly.

The woman didn’t let go of his hand or the hyperbombambulator coil, but she arched an eyebrow at him. “Ah,” she said, “but if _you’d_ like it, we might be able to reach an accommodation.”

“What do you ...” The Doctor’s palm buzzed where it touched hers, the buzz wandering through his wristbone, meandering up his forearm, each centimetre of travel releasing another microsecond of memory. “No. You can’t be. You’re not –”

“Margaret Thatcher reincarnated? No, love, I have standards.”

“But you’re –”

“The Queen of Evil? The Sultana of Sin?” She turned, looked in either direction, leaned in close. A whisper, breath hot against the Doctor’s cheek. “The Master, darling. But you can call me ‘Missy.’”

His whole body vibrated in time with his hearts. “You’re dead,” he said. “You can’t –” 

But she was, the way she’d always been, no matter what absurd limits the Time Lords and genetics had placed upon her. The only reason she wasn’t the most improbable survivor is that he was, too, bound to her by some invisible universal principle insisting that if one existed, the other had to as well.

“I saw you die,” he said, a quiver in his voice. “You swore you wouldn’t regenerate. _I burned your body._ Proper funeral rites, give or take the Cardinals chanting and an official transfer of your brain pattern to the Matrix. And _I mourned you._ Whether you deserved it or not.”

“Oh, blah blah blah, spare me the moping about your ineffable loneliness and despair. This isn’t the first time I’ve turned up when you least expected me – even though you should always expect me. Lay in the good tea and biscuits, the ones with the apricot jam,” she said. She yanked his hand and the hyperbombambulator out of the box. “Come along, let’s walk and talk. And maybe more, if you play your cards right.”  
  


* * *

  
“Yes, I’m alive, do catch up,” she said halfway past the fish kebab stand. One kebab was a nibble down before they hit the payment counter, and the other was thrust into the Doctor’s hand as the payment counter breezed by without a pause. “Ugh, never enough fenugreek,” Missy said after a full bite, snatching the Doctor’s kebab away and tossing both over her shoulder.

Lolling outside Alf’s Assorted Antiques, admiring the vintage Asphodarian timepieces in the window display while the Doctor glared at her: “Can’t we let bygones be bygones? I cleaned your cage once a week, didn’t I? And let you have a few cold chips in July? With a sprinkle of malt vinegar? Though you did cry very prettily; perhaps I could make you do that again,” she said.

Missy’s fingers tapped a sharp, burning trail across the Doctor’s face.

“Just a few tears,” she added, swiping for one he refused to give her now. “They were delicious.”

Past the seating area for the central food hall, where Missy liberated another fish kebab from a patron and almost immediately threw it back for excessive turmeric: “If you’re still sad about your latest girlfriend leaving you, I can tell you she’s busy forgetting you in another man’s arms,” she said. “One of the ones she met while she was criss-crossing the Earth for you. I have to admit, I admired her persistence. It’s rare you get one that good. Perhaps you should have held onto her.”

And finally, her hand still in a death grip on the Doctor and the hyperbombambulator coil: “I don’t actually need this, you know. I’ve only my vortex manipulator. I just like tormenting you by taking what you need most.”

“What could you possibly know about what I need? Where have you even been?”

“My dear Doctor,” she said, her other hand on his cheek now, “you always need the same thing. Me.”  
  


* * *

  
Missy had a room above an antique typewriter shop; a single grimy window and a bed that was more puffy purple pillows than mattress, not that it mattered as long as they were comfortable, and even that was a debatable requirement. She had him on his back in seconds, his hands gripping the metal poles of the headboard, the hyperbombambulator rolling away on the dubiously level floor, forgotten. Well, it was a spare part, anyway. He could always build one himself out of the roomfuls of scraps and wires he’d hoarded over the last thousand or so years.

“I didn’t come here to ...” he started. “I mean, I didn’t come here not to, it’s not like we haven’t, though never like–” He waved a hand in circles near Missy’s bosom, then returned it to the headboard when she firmly pushed his hand back down.

“Doctor. We’ve always had the same set of mutual priorities, and they always boil down to ‘being together,’ give or take a little murder.” She unpinned her hat, sent it spinning over one of the bedpoles. “Today’s not about murder, in case you haven’t already worked that out.”

“I’m just ...” His hand reaching for her now.

“No,” she said, grasping him by the wrist. Her thighs squeezed him at his waist, and the Doctor let out a breath despite himself.

“... I’m just glad you’re alive. That I’m not alone anymore.”

She slapped him. Hard, but the Master had hit him harder than this, and the Doctor’s face stung and buzzed and warmed in aftershock. Missy wouldn’t shut him up, not this easily, not in the least because now the Doctor knew he’d rattled her. 

“You don’t want to be alone, either, or you wouldn’t be here,” he said. “You wouldn’t have tracked me down to this world – how much work did that take, by the way, with just that bodged-up vortex manipulator? – and you wouldn’t have tracked me down to this marketplace, and that stall, and you definitely wouldn’t have been waiting here long enough to let a room and furnish it –”

Another slap, this time across the opposite cheek, and even with his head straightening up the filing cabinets she’d knocked loose, and his eyes needing a moment to refocus, he could see the flush in Missy’s face, sense the tightening of her hips and the corresponding tightening of his trousers.

“No,” he said, and he grabbed her by both wrists. “You’re not the one in charge here now. Not anymore. Not after what you did.”

She was surprisingly easy to push off to the side so he could hover above her instead. The gleam in her eye and her tongue tracing her lips suggested there was a reason this reversal had gone so smoothly.

“I was just having a bit of fun,” she said. “You can’t expect me to flirt without a touch of genocide. It simply wouldn’t do.”

“People _died._ You tortured my friends. Do what you like to me, but leave the rest of them alone.”

A jolt prickled up his spine as she stroked him through his trousers: slow, even, maddening. He rocked into her touch despite himself.

“Silly boy. You get so bored without me to challenge you.”

“This isn’t a challenge.” 

Below him, Missy licked her lips again, and flicked the Doctor’s trouser button open with thumb and forefinger, one nail at the top of his zipper, inching it downwards tooth by tooth. Delicately, prolonging the whispering touch of her hands over his cock.

“No,” she said, her hand dipping inside his trousers now, “I suppose it isn’t.”

She tugged at his underwear with a finger, and he slipped a hand in to help her, then one to bunch the ludicrous amount of skirt at her waist. She’d always taken costume seriously, if not always fashion, though this Mary Poppins drag was the most outrageous effort since that time he’d been an American, of all things.

She hadn’t bothered with knickers, though. Convenient, and presumably part of the same plan that had included renting a flat and stalking him through the junk shops. She drew him inside her even as she pushed him away when he leaned down to kiss her.

“When we’re done,” she said. “If you’re good enough.”

They’d fucked on the Valiant, of course: sometimes with him de-aged, sometimes not, always in whatever configuration the Master had wanted, and this time, so carefully arranged by a woman who’d had to have been stalking him across time and space, was no different. Not that she, or he, hadn’t always been stalking the Doctor across time and space, claiming that they had to destroy him, while simultaneously stroking his chin or begging for a kiss. But it was only the second time the Doctor had legitimately thought the Master was permanently dead and gone, and given the number of close scrapes they’d had even before they got out of the Academy, that was saying something.

Even if she wouldn’t let him kiss her, one of her hands neared his mouth, her finger resting on his lower lip so he could suck on it; her other hand clutched his arse, spurring him deeper inside her. Her breath escaped her in increasingly short gasps, her eyes fluttering shut as he found his rhythm. A crush of bunched cotton skirts at Missy’s waist and underwear and trousers scrunched below the Doctor’s groin and never mind how uncomfortable clothing could be when it was being worn at all, much less being worn where it wasn’t supposed to be: there was nothing more than Missy’s legs wrapped around his own, the sigh in her voice, the energy flickering at the point where the two of them met.

Sometimes when they’d fucked, they couldn’t stop taunting each other. “You must really be hard up for it if you’ve come looking for me,” the Doctor had said, or “if you really want a consolation prize now that I’ve beaten you, we could try the lucky dip at the funfair,” while the Master had cut deeper: “You’re still the weak-willed Academy washout you always were, or you wouldn’t be here,” and once, “Remember how this feels, because I’m going to do it to Martha Jones when I find her.”

But the Doctor’s gratitude that the Master existed at all stilled his tongue, and Missy, whether out of inclination or simple pleasurable distraction, wasn’t filling the gap right now, either. So the only sounds were the Doctor’s short breaths as his body curved above Missy’s; her sharp, trembling cries; the creaks of the wooden beams below the bed.

Sweat pooled at the base of his throat, and he was braced on his elbows to lean closer to Missy, but still whenever he tried to kiss her lips, she turned away or pushed at his chest. The base of her neck was acceptable territory, however, and he dragged his tongue along the taut muscle leading up to her jawbone, burying his head where her neck curved and nipping her with his teeth. 

She was still moaning instead of talking, but after a gulping breath, she managed, “I need you ... I need you to ...”

“What, Missy?” 

She tilted her head towards him. There was a blush in her cheek beyond the makeup she was wearing in this body, and every word was punctuated with a gasp. 

“I need you to forgive me,” she finally said.

He was so close, all the electricity in his body buzzing at the base of him, and yet still he faltered when Missy spoke. She couldn’t truly be repentant, could she? The Master never had been before, not really, not even when he’d worked with the Doctor in the end because his own plans had gone so tragically, ludicrously awry.

But what if she was?

She drew him closer, allowing his forehead to meet hers. They hadn’t made any psychic contact yet, and she still wouldn’t let him in that deeply, but the warmth on her brow was enough.

He found his rhythm again, and said, lips a centimetre from hers, “I forgive you.”

Missy cried out, her body shuddering beneath his, and he followed alongside her a moment later.

His brain was still whirling when she reached for his cheek, stroked him with a fingernail. “Now you may kiss me,” she said.

The Doctor brushed his lips against Missy’s lightly, barely closing the gap between them. He found the corner of her mouth, traced his way along the edges without any real pressure; just the shadow of his lips on hers for now. She wasn’t going to get to dictate every term. 

The tip of his tongue followed the same path, but even more slowly, and pulled back when Missy parted her lips for him.

“Now you’re just being tiresome,” she said.

“Turnabout’s fair play, or so I’ve heard.”

“Boooring,” she replied, and dug her fingers in his hair, drawing him back down until at last their mouths met and the Doctor sank into the kiss. Missy’s lips were soft and she was biting his lower lip and was that a hint of anise he tasted mixing with blood’s salty tang? Coriander, perhaps? His head still spun, even more of a whirligig than before, and when he broke the kiss to lie beside Missy, the whole room seemed to travel round with him. His tongue felt like it was expanding to fill his mouth and his eyelids were wobbling shut and no matter how tightly he gripped the bedspread, the room wouldn’t stop rotating.

“Missy,” he said, as his nerves tingled from spine to hand and foot, then subsided into numbness, “what did you do to me?”

“I borrowed a very special lipstick from the most charming psychopath,” Missy said. “Met her in Stormcage. She said to tell you hello, not that you’ll remember it. Or this. Or anything from the last three or four hours.”

He could only form words out of sheer stubbornness now, and fortunately, he’d always had barrelfuls of that. But deep at the bottom of the last barrel, all he could find was, “Why?”

She turned towards him and kissed him one last time. “Oh, my love,” she said, “what would ever make you think you get to win?”  
  


* * *

  
When the Doctor woke up, he was slumped at the base of the TARDIS, and there was liquid dripping on the back of his hand. His suit was ... soaked? And there was a haze of piney juniper and lemon oil and the spicy citrus of geranium? Which potentially could all be explained by the bottle labelled “Rassilon’s Old Peculiar” rolling at his feet, as if he remembered buying that bottle in the first place, much less ever cracking it open, but here it was, empty but for a few swallows, and his suit reeking of it. He hadn’t come to this world for a party – in fact, what had he come here for? Surely there must have been a good reason, even if all he’d apparently found was an excuse to get utterly soused in a way in which he’d done only a handful of times in all his thousand-plus years.

He struggled his way upright, tucking the bottle into a suit pocket so as not to leave any litter behind, and stumbled into the control room. Time to head ... somewhere, maybe let the Old Girl decide where, since clearly he wasn’t capable of making a wise decision right now. Let them take their time getting there so that he could spend a while tending to her and making sure she was in tip-top shape. Might even need to stop somewhere they could buy a few spare parts, just in case.

He pushed the drive lever forwards, and let his ship take him where she wanted to go.


End file.
